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Voting problems at One Spark create headache for creators

One Spark voting kiosk had no problems for attendees while the One Spark mobile voting app did.

Issues with One Spark’s mobile voting app during the festival’s first day are raising fears among creators that they be losing votes from interested attendees.

“If it’s a user error there’s nothing we can really do about that, but also as issues are coming up our web developers are defiantly taking care of it as quick as they can,” said Meredith Johnson, One Spark’s public relations and volunteer services manager.

Johnson speculated the problem might arise when users may not have turned off their GPS setting on their cell phones and tablets. That may be causing a block that prevents phones from allowing the One Spark app to connect to an attendee’s location, a necessity for voting.

“It’s been a pain in the butt for us, because we’ve had an insane amount of traffic. We loved it, but we felt like none of them were able to vote at all,” said Jason Pratt, one of the creators from Pratt Brothers. “We want to see them vote for us because it’s so important for us to capture these votes.”

Pratt isn’t the only creator frustrated with the mobile voting issues.

“Every time I’ve tried opening up the application it hasn’t opened and we’ve tried logging onto several Wi-Fi networks,” said creator Blake Joel, who is from the recording studio project Amplify. “If I’m not able to vote for myself, I assume other people aren’t able to vote for me too.”

The mobile app is not the only way attendees can vote. They can also vote at information kiosks, through texting and at home as long as they have electronically checked in at the festival, which can be done easily at the kiosks and through texting.

“It’s been in and out,” Johnson said of the voting snafus. “A lot of times if people are using their smart phones to vote, maybe they don’t have GPS enabled and some people might not know how to turn it on. So the easiest thing to do is just go to a voting information kiosk and have a volunteer check you in and then you should be able to sign into your app and vote with no problem.”

Voting seems to be a recurring issue at One Spark. Last year attendees had similar issues that arose with voting.

“Everything about One Spark is very strong, and very good, but their voting system is very poor. It could be better,” Pratt said. “I don’t know the answer, but they need to have more of a fail-safe.”

Hopefully the mobile voting problems will be fixed so attendees can vote for creators without having to walk to a kiosk every time they choose to vote.

“Our web developers are defiantly taking care of it as quickly as they can,” Johnson said. “We are doing everything we can to keep it running smoothly.”